Carmen Ariza Part 144

"And that," said Carmen, rising, "is my G.o.d."

Father Waite nodded significantly to the others, and sat down, leaving the girl facing them, her luminous eyes looking off into unfathomed distances, and her face aglow with spiritual light.

"My G.o.d is infinite Good, to whom evil is unknown," she said. "And good includes all that is real. It includes wisdom, intelligence, truth, life, and love--none of them material. How do I know? Oh, not by human reasoning, whereby you seek to establish the fact of His existence, but by proof, daily proof, and in the hours when the floods of suppositional evil have swept over me. You would rest your faith on your deductions. But, as Saint Gregory said, no merit lies in faith where human reason supplies the proof; and that you will all some day know. Yes, my G.o.d is Mind. And He ceaselessly expresses Himself in and through His ideas, which He is constantly revealing. And He is infinite in good. And these ideas express that goodness and infinitude, from the tiniest up to the idea of G.o.d himself. And that grandest idea is--man. Oh, no, not the men and women you think you see about you in your daily walk. No! no! They but counterfeit the divine.

But the man that Jesus always saw back of every human concept. That man is G.o.d's own idea of Himself. He is G.o.d's image and likeness. He is G.o.d's reflection. That is the man we shall all put on when we have obeyed Paul and put off the old man, its counterfeit."

"Then, Carmen," said Father Waite, "you believe all things to be mental?"

"Yes, everything--man himself--and matter."

"But, if G.o.d is mind, and infinite, He must include all things. Hence He must include this imperfect representation, called the physical man. Is it not so?"

"No," returned the girl emphatically. "Did not Jesus speak often of the one lie about his Father, G.o.d? The material man and the material universe are but parts of that lie. And a lie is always a supposition; not real. All evil is contained in that supposition--a supposition that there is power and life and substance apart from G.o.d."

"But who made the supposition?" queried Haynerd.

"A supposition is not made," replied Carmen quietly. "Its existence is suppositional."

"I don't quite get that," interposed Miss Wall, her brows knitting.

Carmen smiled down at the inquiring woman. "Listen," she said. "The creator of all things is mind. You admit that. But you would have that mind the creator of evil, also. Yet, your own reasoning has shown that, on the premise of mind as infinite, such mind must be forever whole, harmonious, perfect. The thoughts and ideas by which that mind expresses itself must be likewise pure and perfect. Then that creative mind can not create evil. For, a mind that creates evil must itself be evil. And, being infinite, such a mind must include the evil it creates. We would have, then, either a mind wholly evil, or one of mixed evil and good. In either case, that mind must then destroy itself. Am I not right?"

"Your reasoning is, certainly," admitted Miss Wall. "But, how to account for evil, when G.o.d is infinite good--"

"To account for it at all," replied Carmen, "would be to make it something real. Jesus would account for it only by cla.s.sing it as a lie about G.o.d. Now G.o.d, as the creative mind, must likewise be truth, since He is perfection and harmony. Very well, a lie is always the opposite of truth. Evil is the direct opposite of good."

"Yes," said Father Waite, nodding his head as certain bright memories returned to him. "That is what you told me that day when I first talked with you. And it started a new line of thought."

"Is it strange that G.o.d should have a suppositional opposite?"

asked Carmen. "Has not everything with which you are concerned a suppositional opposite? G.o.d is truth. His suppositional opposite is the great lie of evil. G.o.d is good. Hence the same opposite. G.o.d is spirit. The suppositional opposite is matter. And matter is just as mental as the thoughts which you are now holding. G.o.d is real. Good is real. And so, evil and the lie are unreal."

"The distinction seems to me theoretical," protested Miss Wall.

Hitt then took the floor. "That word 'real,'" he said, "is perhaps what is causing your confusion. The real is that which, according to Spencer, does not pa.s.s away. We used to believe matter indestructible, forever permanent. We learn that our views regarding it were very incorrect. Matter is quite destructible."

"And yet," said Father Waite, "in this universe of constant change, _something_ endures. What is it but the mind that is G.o.d, expressing itself in such immaterial and permanent things as law, love, life, power?"

"Exactly," replied Hitt. "But now we have been brought back again to the question of matter. If we can prove that matter is mental, and not real substance, we will have established Carmen's premise that everything is mental. Then there remains but the distinction between the mind that is G.o.d, and its suppositional opposite, as expressed in human existence. Let us conclude, therefore, that to-night we have established, at least as a working hypothesis, that, since a thing existing implies a creator; and since the existent universe, being infinite, demands an infinite creator; and since a creator can not be infinite without being at once mind, perfect, eternal, omnipotent, omniactive, and good, we are fully justified in a.s.suming that the creator of all things still exists, and is infinite, ever-present mind. Further than that we are not prepared to go, until we have discussed the questions of matter and the physical universe and man.

Let us leave those topics for a subsequent meeting. And now I suggest that we unite in asking Carmen to sing for us, to crown the unity that has marked this discussion with the harmony of her own beautiful voice."

A few moments later, about the small upright piano which the Beaubien had rented for Carmen, the little group sat in reverent silence, while the young girl sent out through the little room the harmonious expression of her own inner life, the life that had never left heaven for earth.

CHAPTER 3

With her exit from the _beau monde_ and her entrance upon the broad stage of University life, Carmen seemed to have awakened from the lethargy which her abrupt transition from mediaeval Simiti into the modern world had occasioned. The static struggle to hold her own against the rus.h.i.+ng currents of materialism had turned at length in her favor. Her lamp had been kept alight. The lethal influences which rose about her like stupifying fumes in the courts of fas.h.i.+on had been lifted and swept away by the fresher and more invigorating breezes into which her bark had now been drawn.

She plunged into her new work joyously; yet not without a deeper comprehension of its meaning than that of her fellow-students. She knew that the University was but another stepping-stone, even as her social life had been; another series of calls and opportunities to "prove" her G.o.d to be immanent good. And she thankfully accepted its offerings. For she was keenly alive to the materialistic leadings of the "higher education," and she would stand as a living protest against them.

It had not taken her long to discover the impotence lying at the heart of so-called modern education. She had not been slow to mark the disappointment written upon the faces of many of her fellow-students, who had sought in vain a great awakening light in those sacred precincts of learning, but, their confidence betrayed, were now floundering in the devouring mora.s.s of materialism. To her keen insight the University stood revealed as the great panderer to this latest century's obsessing idea that the true function of education is expressed in the imparting of changing, human information and a training for the business of earning one's daily bread according to the infamous code of the world's carnal social system. The University did not meet the most urgent need of the race by equipping men to stand against the great crises of human experience. It did not teach men to lay aside the counterfeit man of material sense; but rather emphasized the world's belief in the reality of this man by minutely detailed courses in his mundane history and the manifestations of his pitiable ignorance in his wanton crimes and watery ambitions. To Carmen, G.o.d was the most insistent fact of creation. And mankind's existence could find its only justification in ceaseless, consecrated manifestation of His harmonious activity. True, the University vaguely recognized G.o.d as infinitely competent. But in the same breath it confessed its utter ignorance of a demonstrable knowledge of Him, to know whom alone is life. True, these men of worldly learning prayed.

But their hollow prayers bore no hope, for they knew not how to gain answers to them.

And yet the girl remained in her new environment, awaiting the call to "come up higher." And meantime she strove to gain daily a wider knowledge of the Christ-principle, and its application to the needs and problems of her fellow-men. Her business was the reflection of her Father's business. Other ambition she had none. The weak, transient, flighty, so-called intellectual life which she saw about her sent no call across the calm currents of her thought. Her education was religious in the strictest, deepest sense, for she was learning to know G.o.d.

Though the girl pursued her way quietly, unwilling that the notoriety which had been fastened upon her should mark her as an object of curiosity, yet her story soon spread among University circles, and the first semester was a scant two weeks old before her name had been debated in the numerous Sororities and Women's Clubs, and quietly dropped. Negro blood coursed in her veins; and the stigma of parental disgrace lay dark upon her. She lived with a woman of blackened reputation--a reputation which waxed no brighter under the casual, malicious comments of J. Wilton Ames, whose great financial strength had made him a Trustee of this inst.i.tution of learning. If Carmen divined the comment that was pa.s.sed concerning herself, she gave no indication. But Hitt and Father Waite knew that the girl had not found favor in the social and fraternal organizations of her mates; and they knew why.

"A curse upon such little minds!" mused Hitt, when he could no longer restrain himself. Then he called a student to his desk one day, at the conclusion of his lecture.

"Miss West," he said, "you are leader in the most prominent Sorority in the University. I want you to give Miss Carmen Ariza a bid."

The girl shook her head. "She is not desirable."

"But the charges against her are unfounded! They are flagrantly false!" stormed Hitt.

"Have you proof, Professor?" the girl asked, as she arched her brows.

"None definite. But--well, what if she were a negress? Hers is the most brilliant mind in the entire student-body!"

But, no. Race segregation is a divine tenet, scripturally justified.

What though the girl's skin vied with the lilies and rosebuds? What though her hair was the brown of ripe fields? Had not G.o.d Almighty decreed that the negro should remain a drawer of water? A hewer of wood? Had the Lord designed him the equal of the n.o.ble white, He would have bleached his face, and bridged his flat nose. Miss West was a Southerner. And the reference to her dark-skinned sisters caused a little _moue_ of disgust, as she flatly declined to consider Carmen an eligible candidate for members.h.i.+p in her Society.

"Lord above!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hitt, who had been brooding over the incident as he walked home with Father Waite. "That toadying, sycophantic, wealth-wors.h.i.+ping Miss West can see no farther than the epidermis! If we could have maintained Carmen's reputation as an Inca princess, this same girl would have fawned at her feet, and begged to kiss the edge of her robe! And she would have used every art of cajolery to ingratiate herself into Carmen's favor, to catch the social crumbs that our girl might chance to drop!"

"There, there, Hitt," soothed Father Waite. "Have you any idea that Carmen is at all injured by Miss West's supercilious conduct?"

"Not in the least!" a.s.severated Hitt vigorously. "But it makes me so--!"

"There, check that! You're forgetting the girl's influence, aren't you?"

Hitt gulped his wrath down his long throat. "Waite," he blurted, "that girl's an angel! She isn't real!"

"Oh, yes, she is!" replied Father Waite. "She's so real that we don't understand her--so real that she has been totally misunderstood by the petty minds that have sought to crush her here in New York, that's all."

"But certainly she is unique--"

"Ah, yes; unique in that she goes about putting her arms around people and telling them that she loves them. Yes, that certainly is unique!

And she is unique in that her purity and goodness hang about her like an exquisite aura, and make people instinctively turn and look after her as she pa.s.ses. Unique in that in her sweet presence one seems to hear a strain of heavenly music vibrating on the air. So unique that the dawn, the nesting birds, the wild flowers, the daily sunset, fairly intoxicate her with ecstasy and make her life a lyric."

Hitt essayed to reply; but the words hung in his throat.

"Yes," continued Father Waite, "she is so unique that when the empty-headed, vain young Duke of Altern, learning that she had been thrown out of society because of the base rumor regarding her parentage, sent her a written statement to the effect that there was no engagement between them, and demanded that she sign it, she did so, with a happy smile, with an invocation, with a prayer for blessing upon those who had tried to ruin her."

"Good G.o.d! Did she do that?"

"Aye, she did. And when Mrs. Hawley-Crowles and Ames and Lafelle filched La Libertad from her, she would have given them the clothes on her back with it, if they had demanded them. Yes, she's unique--so unique that again and again I hear her murmur, as she looks off absently into s.p.a.ce: 'If it is right that he should have a son, then I want it to be so.'"